ZOMBIE OUTBREAK RPG 1.55 'Full'(Build 115)(Lite version with music removed in Other Versions.)

~ Finally pinned down every insufferable glitch, hitch, lag, frag, and splag that drove me crazy about this map. Everything works, it's as balanced as it will ever be. More players makes the core gameplay harder but the end boss easier and vice versa. The game can be beaten solo with prudence and Xanatos-like planning. Most importantly: I've run out of placeable locations. I officially can't add anything more to it. Enjoy.

WARNING: Only playable Multiplayer or LAN mode and at Fastest game speed, due to viewlocking (centers mouse in single-player) and music timing method.

Current Features:

Three global missions, thirteen special missions, and sixteen locations.

An expansive, free roaming, never-the-same-twice assault on the Zombie hordes.

All missions and their locations are rolled randomly. The zombie infestation builds steadily, and must be culled to press onward.

A percentage of points is shared with teammates and converted to minerals. Missions award points based on difficulty and method of completion.

A computer force assists with missions, sometimes being fully capable of completing them alone, but only players have the capability to take it all the way. The computer player also generates some resources for the players and holds a safe area around the hospital.

Build 82-106Ordered somewhat by relative effect on gameplay:-Added new final stage with fresh surprises.-Added variable respawn delay depending on distance from hospital.-Added variable fuel costs to respawn depending on distance from hospital.-Changed gas purchasing system to procure incrementally less fuel per purchase as the game develops.-Changed a mission failure trigger for 'all players dead' to check for a lack of gas as well. Singleplayer now much more viable.-Added zone and trigger to expedite lost starting units to the hospital and get the real game going.-Tutorial Beacon added to hospital roof.-Added new SCV purchasing/building system, including turrets (photon cannons and pylons) and new hero units. -Utilized beacon from 'Return to spawn selection' area for new SCV system. Class reselection is still available at prior location with new hint.-Combat Armor (Hero status) now has a 50/50 chance of being kept on death.-Moved Cyborg Uplink much closer to hospital for better protoss availability.-Enemies now spawn with reduced health depending on infestation level.-Added new audio track.-Altered most player unit stats all around. Mostly damage increases and greater balance of effectiveness.-Increased SCV health-Increased Firebat armor.-Greatly increased base shield strength of protoss units for survivability.-Moved downtown relay.-Moved SCV waiting area.-Halved cost of scarabs.-Added additional checks to Infector triggers to prevent errors.-Added additional spawning of Infector defenses-Added special missions of previous stages to potential missions of final stage.-Added additional targets and enemies to final stage missions.-Added units to CPU enmity system and reduced enmity gain of frequenly splashed units.-Buildings under control for construction prerequisites no longer give 'upgrade anywhere' capabilities.-Changed ordering of view-centering on respawn.-Some respawn check fixes.-Increased cost to repair hospital generator.-Maximum medic count added, extra go to next player to spawn.-Some infestation handling tweaks related to enemies killed.-Halved interval for healing/recharge trigger at hospital.-Reduced unit counts in 'Neutralize attack force' missions.-Altered detector handling and mission time limit in rock quarry special mission.-Altered Infested Terran enemy for more consistent difficulty.

Build 107:-Skipped map compression to avoid losing Player 1 fog data.-Fixed trigger error causing a certain mission to occur too frequently in late game.-Fixed refunding issue with hero squad despite having just successfully purchased them.-Fixed a location error causing a player's Armory to be owned by the player below them when both in shop.

Build 108-110:Ordered by relative effect on gameplay:-Players can now respawn without losing all of their additional units. Requires a certain amount of available gas or the system reverts.-Rebalanced infestation gain rate with extra influences including elapsed time.-Increased enemy unit counts at high infestation levels.-Added additional spawned enemies to garrison missions and extra method of increasing attackers.-Added reward and infestation influence for a side objective that can also be used as a mission.-Increased HP of a mission target.-Building a nuke now removes and refunds Combat Armor if the player commands an armored ghost.-Reduced enemy detection radius.-Added extra trigger to prevent occasional glitch of final boss spawning with fractional HP.-Increased available time and Brown Player responsiveness to infector vulnerability.-Added several new triggers to better manage Brown units active in the field.-Standard Brown units now retreat during final mission.-Fixed some AI of final boss and added extra difficulty-Fixed final boss not disabling hospital healing..-Fixed a small glitch with a reference SCV and its claimable brethren.-Increased spawn rate for Brown civilians.-Added several new options for Brown's unit system based on elapsed time and game stage.-Reduced resultant infestation level after a repelled hospital attack.-Increased distribution rate for one resource sharing system.-Fixed some unit and building names.-Added +1 to all upgrades for green 'display' units to show upgrade amounts.

Build 111-112:-Fixed certain players not having CC addons available.-Reduced overall cost of Nuclear Missile usage to offset lack of armor for the capability.-Fixed some unintended upgrade availability. Should be effectively restricted to only when a unit is present at shop beacon.

Build 113-115:-Added new function for Medkits. Standing next to your own medkit and killing it heals all units in the vicinity to 100%. Increased cost to reflect this.-Fixed addon construction prerequisites. Both Nuke Silo and Comsat Station are now available.-At lower infestation levels, enemies spawn with far less HP.-Increased enemy damage.-Starting gas now properly calculated, much lower.-Added additional spawn triggers for Indie Mercs for better computer ally response to missions.-Changed some basic unit spawning mechanics for computer ally.-Fixed a small AI glitch causing a certain unit to park itself over an indestructible building.

Resource sharing in this version is slightly bugged that you actually get /more/ cash when you have a full room than what would be intended as less. If you want to max out upgrades in the first ten minutes then play this version, otherwise try the more challenging Build 35 or newer.

What a difference in pacing when you aren't stuck on the same mission for twenty minutes because a yellow unit wandered off, or even just the duration of the garrison missions.

I'm confident enough in the gameplay now to add the second half of the mission set and finally an overall objective (certain missions will disable invincibility of your target for a short period, hah).

Currently its difficult enough to complete a set of the second stage missions. I expect the third and fourth stages, once added, to be a nightmare.

Okay, so we THOUGHT we found a glaring exploit. Because the minerals used for upgrades are based on kills points, anything you kill garners points, especially hero types. The Wraith used for exiting the viewlocked shop is the Hero type Wraith, and gives roughly 70-80 minerals a kill. Two players can sit in the shop trading kills of the wraiths without even getting kicked out of the shop.

However, deaths of the wraiths DO count towards the infestation level, and though we were Hero class, 12/25 attack, 10/20 armor, the MASSIVE level hospital rush immediately after wiped us out faster than we could figure out what happened.

So though its an illegitimate resource method, it also has an incredible drawback; especially true now that an infestation increase when already at max level now spawns extra Ultralisks.

I'm not too big on spiffyness. I think a lot of text coloring and terrain blending and sprite usage is just a sham to cover up bad gameplay in the maps you would describe as 'professional'.

tl;dr: I have better things to work on than prettiness.

Killing all of your medkits is a legacy trigger from when they used to all freely roam the map. Medics needed a cleanup whenever all the attack-capable units were dead. When I changed the medics to one-at-a-time and auto-following I didn't realize I could easily remove the medic-dumping, since it will only bring out a medic if you have a unit in the main gameplay area.

>> I think a lot of text coloring and terrain blending and sprite usage is just a sham to cover up bad gameplay in the maps you would describe as ‘professional’.

Complete nonsense. There is zero correlation between "prettiness" and "bad gameplay". If you want examples, find me on USEast sometime and I can show you.

This is coming from an experienced mapper who values gameplay more than any other single factor, but has a solid understanding of people and their motivations - why they play, what they're looking for, and what will happen when you cut corners on certain non-gameplay portions of the game.

But whatever, it's your map, you know your target audience. Do what you want ;)

Nah I'm a few specific maps I've encountered that were all shined up and pretty with all the colors and bells and whistles, if you were to base 'Professional' on that, but were just shat unbalanced 'Move unit to beacon for mass-attack' BS for gameplay.

Didn't make any insinuation that being pretty meant BAD gameplay, words in my mouth man, but you did pretty much say my mapping skills were 'unprofessional' because the map isn't pretty enough.

I guess a run through the string editor could splash some color on things fairly easily (instead of editing every text trigger), but most of that is just pointless in comparison to finishing up the mission structure or making sure one overpowered unit can't bum-rush the whole objective.

Just meant it exactly the way I said it: "I have better things to work on than prettiness.

4. Make the User Interface look decent, for two reasons:- to make it as easy as possible for the player to focus on the core gameplay- if the game has a tough learning curve, the player needs to know that the game is worth learning, some kind of indication that you actually designed great gameplay. even a bit of UI effort helps them stay engaged instead of leaving too soon to appreciate the game.

I would like to make a couple of suggestions:1. Make more allied spawns since most of my games end with chapter 3 and by getting a massive attack on the base which kills everyone of the brown people.2. Allied units should always send atleast some soldiers to the mission objective but atm they might never send them.3. FIX THE CONSECUTIVE HOSPITAL ATTACKS!!! :P

We need more reinforcements due to the mutations,hte automated sentrys are perfect and all which made me happy,but after all the emergency retreats my group just dies out. Maybe allow also a barrack camp in the upgrades shop to hire mercerneries to ease the job going out hunting in missons not following the group heading out.And a more barricaded hospital with bunkers since its an outpost.well hope you can put this in the game.will check back for more of your maps i love the concept.

I definitely have to endorse this latest version, 1.22. Most or all of the errant gameplay mechanics have been worked out, including brown units being wiped out too handily and consecutive attacks on the hospital because of a cascading runaway of infestation modifiers.

Just played a solid 59 minute game as Marine with a full house through half of it and minus-one for the rest. I've worked in so many ways to dole justice to the zombies that I've honestly forgotten how most of it works now, so I may be closing down to a final version soon.

Likely a final version, barring some immense glitch or bug. Difficulty of final battle has been increased drastically and may require dedicated players to reach the end with enough players remaining to defeat the final target. The last common annoyance, having to lose all your spiffy units to respawn, has been worked-around without having to rewrite about eighteen triggers completely with 12 new condition lines each.

The music is currently being remastered from original sources to 16-bit instead of 8-bit for quite the quality increase with minimal size penalty. A 'Full' version will be up in a few days (after I remember my original specifications XD ). My target of 1mb still stands, so additional tracks are not out of the question, especially after stripping nonessential strings from the map (which may have benefited this lite version had I not already uploaded it before remembering the plan to do so). Perhaps a 'superlite' stripped version as well after development is surely finished.

Overall I like the polish on this map. I started playing with "version 1.0" on battlenet and found the 1.50 Lite version 06/2010.

150L has "unit lag" (too many units for old machines). Is there a way to release a 1.5L-OC (Old Computer) version that has significantly less number of units to prevent old computers from lagging? The units may be scaled up in strength to compensate for fewer units.

Also possible: tips on how to do this with an editor if the authors don't want to do it.

I know about the lag issue and its actually because of building handling. Its from 'giving' units between players at too fast a rate (in this case, about 24 times per second XD).

I made the upgrade buildings blink to brown every cycle to prevent upgrading without a unit actually at the pad (if you own an SCV or CC its so you can build things that have requirements).

I've sought alternatives such as disabled unit sprits (which apparently SCMDraft can't do) and I'm likely just going to dial back the blink rate since the difference between 0 and 1 on upgrade build time is great enough to still prevent upgrading even by relinquishing the buildings just once per second.

The new music is done too, and I'm just waiting for a version of TinyMap2 that doesn't break my player 1 fog data.